—To my first friend, Cheyenne, for teaching me how to use my imagination—

THIS IS A COLLECTION of harmless obsessions and recurring images, arranged in some semblance of chronological order for those of us who cannot yet get our heads around the concept of everything happening at once.

However, if the theory that Time is one big lump of stuff strikes you as being pretty rudimentary, you won’t have a problem believing that, somewhere out there in its slipstream, Sir Patrick Scales is simultaneously volunteering to fight the Moors, going into battle dressed from head to foot in azure silk, having his teeth knocked out in combat and reporting to Queen Isabel, “I have opened a window so that through it Christ, who built this structure, may more easily see what is hidden inside.”

The stories in this collection are escapees from a prison named Procrastination. Some people don’t even have to try — everything comes to them. Their toast falls buttered-side up; when their shaver doesn’t shave as close as a blade they really do get their money back; and while recuperating from a life-threatening illness they manage to knock-off a blockbuster novel from their sick bed. I’m lucky if I can find the energy to compose a shopping list. Enough is enough! Tomorrow there’ll be some changes made around here...

One of the least harmful ways of telling lies is the writing of fiction. Hence the flippant title. One of the many questions raised during the writing of these stories has been: how many lies do I have to tell in order to find the truth? I don’t know what the answer is, because I’m not sure I was ever close enough to it to find out. You decide.

What I am constantly striving for is an incantation to summon an atmosphere, in the way that the best songs and the most potent perfumes can do. You might ask why I am wasting my time with stories when I could be writing songs or blending perfumes. I try to direct what little energy I have towards satisfying myself with the results. If I was a cobbler, which I am not, I would be doing my best to create an atmosphere with shoes.

The written word is one of the keys to unlocking a door in the fragile construction we call reality so that we may see what is behind it. Most of the characters I have invented are, like me, possessed by something. Their behaviour towards the subject matter of their stories is obsessive. I, too, am possessed by the constant search for something I cannot put a name to. Certain themes and images repeat themselves; or come back to haunt me, having subtly shifted their emphasis. This has been my experience of life so far.

It is a long journey. Perspectives alter as we move across the landscape. The branches of bare winter trees are overlaid on others in a frieze, creating a moving template; fields give the impression that they are moving to the left, passing hills and forests which, consequently, move to their right. Some objects will never be encountered again. Others give the watcher the impression that they have been seen before, in different seasons, before they, too, pass again. It is rather like one of those Indian puppet films in which figures are lit from behind, moving in paper layers under a paper world; each layer creating a silhouette, an illusion of the real thing. There is music to accompany this sensation. Not so much a song, more an atmosphere. At the moment, it is Soft Machine, on their album ‘Bundles’. It’s called The Floating World, and I am floating in it.

It’s dark now and quiet. Drizzle is glistening in the warmth of a street lamp; slanting through its amber glow. The past resonates in me: the baying of a foghorn; seagulls bickering in Welsh dialect; a gale-warning for the Irish Sea; wind howling behind the fire.

The tick of a clock and the scratching of my pen are gradually drowned-out, replaced by fingers tapping on a keyboard.

A lot of pages have ended up in the bin. I can’t guarantee that what’s left is the best I am capable of, but it seemed like it at the time. I ought to have other things to say before you look through the window I have opened and see what is hidden inside; they all feel like excuses, too.

I will let the escapees speak for themselves.

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Credit where due

Gratitude for help, encouragement and editorial assistance is due to the following: Chris Kenworthy; Graham Evans at The Edge; Andy Cox at The Third Alternative; Tony Lee at Pigasus Press; Geoff Lynas at Threads; Alex Bardy at Sierra Heaven; Dave Logan at Grotesque; John Benson & Tina Riegel at Not One Of Us; Sally McBride & Dale L. Sproule at TransVersions; John Murray & Jessie Anderson at the late, lamented Panurge; John Mole at The Mandeville Press; Isa Moynihan at Takahe; Beverly Moore at Medusa’s Hairdo; David G. Barnett & Aaron Vest at Into The Darkness; Wayne Dean-Richards at Chronicles of Disorder; Bruce Hunter at the David Higham Agency; Michelle Oliver at Axiom; Gavin Wilson at RQC; Jouni Uääräkangas at Sivullinen; Eva Weidman & Chris Kent at Zygote; Robert McCrum at Faber & Faber; Tim Adams, formerly of Granta; Peter Jamieson Sinclair at Auslander; William O Campbell at Story Cellar; Bill Furley, co-editor of The Heidelberg Review; Mrs F.D. Nadin and Peter Whitbread at The Writers Bureau; Suzanne Riley at Quartos; Valerie Hoskins and Leigh Blake.

Thanks to: Peggy Liss for Isabel the Queen: Life and Times (Oxford University Press, 1993) and to Lucille Bogan for Shave ’em Dry.

The wooden men on the cover of The Bumper Book of Lies and described in Wide Awake and Half Asleep are sculpted by the great Hannes Golda of Bremen, Germany, to whom the story is dedicated.

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